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On Colorado’s Dark Night

Hopefully the wounded are recovering and the families of the deceased have been notified, so they can begin the mourning and healing process, and hopefully the families with surviving loved ones will be reunited, and the wounded will all heal. Early last night a 3-month old was reported shot as well, but the 3-month old pulled through. Small miracles; prayers and wishes for the victims.

But just today, the media frenzy has already begun. Were I a big media figure, I’d leave it until tomorrow at least, and only issue the above statement. Since I’m not a big media figure yet, just a little blogger with some sense, and since the media and the anti-gun establishment is already running wild trying to use the blood of the victims to push their agendas it’s time to put this quote out there:

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.

– William S. Burroughs

Watch the media for more.

Since ABC newscasters already accused the killer of being a Tea Partier and the 24 hour news cycle monster has begun feasting while apparently the dead are still laying in the theater as the police try to ascertain what happens, I’ll make a few small speculations, since the media and little tyrants are already calling for restriction of citizens’ rights in the guise of “gun control”.

One: The guy who colored his hair like the joker and was wearing tactical gear, a kevlar vest, and was caught with an AR, an 870, two Glock .40s, a gas mask, bombs, and who booby-trapped his apartment with incendiary devices, and who has called himself “The Joker” to the police, is the guy who did it. Let’s drop this allegedly crap.

Two: No gun control would’ve worked. He bought his guns over the course of months, so the one-gun-a-month law wouldn’t work. He had no criminal history, so that didn’t disqualify him. His background was that of a graduate student in neuroscience, going for his Ph. D. By all means, he is a member of the trusted intelligentsia, and would’ve been operating on open craniums in a few years as a neurosurgeon. Society and the government were ready to trust him to crack open people’s skulls and poke in their brains, they would trust him with guns. Even without guns, he could’ve just as easily taken the Bath School Disaster route and used gasoline bombs, or the same route as McVeigh and used ANFO, or any number of other means to commit his rampage. The guy is a madman, and no matter what rules are put in place, he would break them.

Three: Further calls for gun control will be similarly ineffective. After Virginia Tech’s shootings, there were calls for mental health assessments that went so far as to strip veterans who’d asked for help from the VA of their rights. As of now, we’ve heard of no incidents of mental illness, and like terrorist jihadi Nadal Hassan, he also was in the neuroscience field. He was in the field of deciding who’s crazy and who’s not. Outlawing “crazy” people from having guns wouldn’t have stopped this either (and the mentally defective are already banned from buying firearms, as evidenced by the “adjudicated mentally defective” question on the 4473.) He bought his firearms at Gander Mountain and BassPro shops, filling out required paperwork, so the “gun show loophole” which is simply private citizen sales (like you selling to your brother) wouldn’t have made a difference either.

Four: Gun control never works, except for the repressive state to crush the serfs. Total gun control leads to totalitarian states, totalitarian states lead to slaughter on unprecedented scales. Communist regimes throughout the 20th Century had a combined body count of over 94 million killed.

There is very little that could’ve been done to prevent this. Everyone having a CC permit to protect themselves certainly helps, but wouldn’t have prevented this, though it might have stopped it in its tracks. It might have, as the Colorado church shooting was stopped by Jeanne Assam, or how at Trolley Square an off-duty police officer carrying concealed against shopping center rules stopped that shooting. Or a CC holder may have had no way to help and it wouldn’t have mattered at all. An armed society may be a polite and safe society, but many people don’t want to carry that heavy figurative burden every day, and there’s no reason they should have to.

These are things lessons that the victims of evil men already know. When Dr. Suzanna Hupp’s parents were killed in front of her at the Luby’s Massacre in Killeen, Texas, she knew the gunman was a madman, a “rabid dog”, she was mad at her representatives that had disarmed her and several other patrons, and she knew that just being armed against a madman may still not have stopped him, though it would’ve been a chance. She did point out that nothing done to her rights would protect her, and that the madman broke laws against murder that day, just like the Batman madman did as well.

You can’t stop evil. You can’t legislate against tools that protect good people to stop evil people. Doesn’t work. Never has, never can, never will. You can legislate to help good people protect themselves, but even that may not stop evil people. It might, and it has (as in the Colorado New Life Church shooting, the Appalachian Law School shooting, or even the Charles Whitman tower shooting where citizens shot back with deer rifles) but the call for gun control, which can by its very definition only apply to the law-abiding, won’t work.

There will be speculation about this for a long while – and it’ll be interesting to see how the tone is different from that of the Ft. Hood massacre.

Update: I’d be remiss if I didn’t note this as well. It’s not Batman’s fault. It’s not the fault of heavy metal music or video games or violent movies or anything else. People like fantastic villains and heroes, and they like to watch those stories because it reminds them of the excitement of life when we’re living in pretty good times. Overall, even though our standard of living is declining, it hasn’t slumped to subsistence farming (yet), and we enjoy our leisure time. It’s not the fault of the Gall’s catalog and the gear they sell, nor is it the fault of movie studios for putting out really violent films. If people want to see them, responsible adults will go see them. If they don’t, they won’t. American culture, over the broad spectrum, really doesn’t glorify violence that much. Our national anthem doesn’t talk about watering the furrows of our fields with the impure blood of our enemies, it’s about a resilient flag, to the tune of a drinking song.